The Naked Communist by W. Cleon Skousen
The men who had engineered the fatal Chinese policy quickly collaborated on a report designed to justify their handling of America's interests in the Far East. It was called "United States Relations With China" and was published as a "White Paper" in 1949. To many people the arguments in this paper were highly persuasive, but not to all; in fact, the loss of China brought a startling awakening to some of those who had been with General Marshall and had trusted the Communists almost to the very last.
One of these was America's ambassador to China during that critical period, Dr. John Leighton Stuart.2 As a former missionary to China and president of Yenching University; he could not help but evaluate the fall of China as a vast human disaster. He criticized himself for having a part in it and censured his colleagues for trying to cover up their mistakes in the White Paper.
Dr. Stuart frankly declared: "We Americans (who were carrying out the China policy) mainly saw the good things about the Chinese Communists, while not noticing care fully the intolerance, bigotry, deception, disregard for human life, and other evils which seem to be inherent in any totalitarian system. We kept Communist meanings for such adjectives as progressive, democratic, liberal, also bourgeois, reactionary, imperialist, as they intended we should do. We failed to realize fully the achievements to date and the potentialities of Chinese democracy. Therefore, we cannot escape a part of the responsibility of the great catastrophe -- not only for China, but also for America and the free world -- the loss of the Chinese mainland."
Concerning the White Paper he said: "I was, in fact, merely one of many persons who were perplexed and filled with apprehension by what they found in this extraordinary book.... It is clear that the purpose was not to produce a 'historian's history' but to select materials which had been used in making the policy in effect at the moment. What had been omitted were materials rejected in the making of policy, materials which had not been relied upon."
This had been General Wedemeyer's complaint. The diplomatic strategists were not willing to neither recognize the realities of the situation nor reverse their evaluation of Communist leaders even though the evidence of duplicity was everywhere.
An Amazing Development
By 1949 there was little excuse for any alert American to further deceived by Communist strategy. Dozens of American-Communist spies had been exposed, the leading American Communists had been arrested by the FBI and convicted of conspiring to overthrow the U.S. Government by violence, Whittaker Chambers, Elizabeth Bentley and a swarm of exCommunist agents had laid bare their souls, the Western Allies had gone through the vicious squeeze play of the Berlin blockade and the United States had spent billions in foreign aid to keep Russia from consuming all of Europe the same way she had taken over China. But in spite of all this, a meeting was sponsored by the State Department in October, 1949, which almost defies explanation.
It was held for the announced purpose of deciding what the "experts" believed should be done in the Far East. The meeting was presided over by Philip Jessup of the State Department, and those in attendance included not only State Department officials, but many select guests who were interested in Asia. Dr. John Leighton Stuart was present and afterwards expressed deep apprehension concerning the slant of the entire discussion. Harold Stassen was also present and later testified that the majority present favored the following policies:
1. European aid should be given priority over Asia.
2. Aid to Asia should not be started until after a "long and careful study."
3. Russian Communists should be considered "not as aggressive as Hitler" and "not as apt to take direct military action to expand their empire."
4. Communist China should be recognized by the U.S.
5. Britain and India should be urged to follow suit in recognizing the Chinese Communists.
6. The Chinese Communists should be allowed to take over Formosa.
7. The Communists should be allowed to take over Hong Kong from Britain if the Communists insisted.
8. Nehru should not be given aid because of his "reactionary and arbitrary tendencies."
9. The Nationalist blockade of China should be broken and economic aid sent to the Communist mainland.
10. No aid should be sent to Chiang or to the anti-Communist guerillas in South China.
Two of the men at the conference who were foremost in promoting these policies were Owen Lattimore and Lawrence Rosinger. Both were eventually identified by Louis Budenz (former editor of the Daily Worker testifying under oath) as members of the Communist Party.3
Even if there had been no such identification, the glaring truth which every man at the conference should have known was the fact that this entire list of policies was a car bon copy of the prevailing "party line" coming out of Moscow. For months these very policies had been hammered out in every edition of the Communist press. It was a singular commentary on the judgment and professional discernment of those officials who fell in with these fantastic recommendations -- particularly in the light of the provocative and inflammatory policies which Russia was using at that very moment to threaten nations in nearly every region of the free world.
Three months after this conference, the new Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, announced several policies portending the loss of Formosa and the liquidation of the Chinese Nationalists by the Communists. First, he overruled the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (to give strong military aid to Chiang) by announcing on January 12, 1950, that the principles itemized above as point No. 6 and point No. 10 was to be official U.S. policy. He also stated that the U.S. defense perimeter in the Pacific did not include either Formosa or South Korea. He stated that if an attack should occur outside the U.S. defense perimeter "the initial reliance must be on the people attacked to resist it." Then he suggested that they could appeal to the United Nations.
This was simply a blunt statement that the U.S. diplomats were abandoning Formosa and Korea. This announcement was shocking to many students of the Far East, not only because the policy violated U.S. self-interest, but because it literally invited Communist attack on these free-world allies by giving advance notice that these areas could be invaded without interference from the United States.
It took just six months for the Communists to select and prepare their point of attack. They chose the practically defenseless territory of South Korea as the first theater of war.
The Communist Attack on South Korea
It will be recalled that the Yalta agreement allowed Russia to take over North Korea at the same time the Soviets occupied Manchuria. As elsewhere, the Russians did not withdraw their troops until a strong Communist puppet government was firmly entrenched. As for South Korea, U.S. forces occupied the territory up to the 38th parallel.
During 1949 a United Nations mandate required both Russia and the U.S. to withdraw their troops. The Russians left behind them a powerful North Korean Red Army consisting of 187,000 well-trained and well-equipped troops, 173 Russian tanks, quantities of Russian-built artillery and 200 Russian planes. On the other hand, South Korea was a new-born Republic with an army of 96,000 men who were poorly equipped with practically no tanks, anti-tank weapons, heavy artillery or fighter planes. This meant that by the end of 1949 South Korea was even more vulnerable to attack from North Korea than Formosa was from Communist China. And the Washington diplomats had assured both Formosa and Korea that in case of attack they definitely could not expect any military help from the United States. As spokesman for the diplomatic left-wing contingent, Owen Lattimore explained the situation: "The thing to do is let South Korea fall, but not to let it look as if we pushed it."4
In the early dawn of Sunday, June 25, 1950, 8 divisions of the North Korean Red Army spilled across the 38th parallel and plunged southward toward the city of Seoul. Frantic calls went out from President Sigmund Rhee to the Security Council of the United Nations, to President Truman in Washington and to General Douglas MacArthur in Japan. All three responded. The Security Council pronounced North Korea
General MacArthur responded by flying to Korea and reporting the desperate situation to Washington. President Truman responded by completely reversing the policy of his diplomatic advisers and ordering General MacArthur to pour U.S. ground troops in from Japan to stop the red tide. Thus the war began.
For several weeks the situation looked very black. General MacArthur was made supreme commander of all United Nations forces, but at first these were so limited that the shallow beachhead at Pusan was about all they could hold. Then General MacArthur formulated a desperate plan. It was so difficult and illogical that he felt certain it would come to the Communists as a complete surprise. It did. On September 15, half way up the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. Navy (with two British carriers), the Air Force, Army and Marine Corps combined to launch an ingenious invasion at Inchon -- a point where the 29-foot tide made a landing seem fantastic. Split-second timing permitted landings and the next thing the North Koreans knew they were trapped in the jaws of a mighty military pincer movement which cut across their supply lines and then rapidly closed in to wipe out the flower of the whole North Korean Army which, of course, was concentrated in the South. It was a magnificent victory.
MacArthur then turned his armies toward the north. The ROK's (South Koreans) went up the East Coast while other U.N. troops went up the West Coast. In doing this, General MacArthur was required to act on obscure hints rather than specific directions from Washington and the U.N. For a while it appeared that he might be forbidden to pursue the enemy forces retreating to the North.
By the middle of October the coastal spearheads of the U.N. offensive were nearing the northernmost parts of Korea and the war appeared practically over. There was the immediate prospect of unifying the entire Korean Peninsula and setting up a democratic republic. Then, in November, unexpectedly disaster struck.
From across the northern Korean boundary of the Yalu River came the first flood tide of what turned out to be a Chinese Communist army of one million men. As these troops came pouring into North Korea, the U.N. forces found themselves smothered by a great wave of fanatical, screaming, and suicidal humanity. MacArthur radioed to Washington: "We face an entirely new war!"
The U.N. lines were cut to ribbons as their wall of defense was pushed back below the 38th parallel. General MacArthur could scarcely believe that the Chinese Communists would dare to risk the massive retaliation of the United States atomic bombing Air Force by this inexcusable assault on U.N. forces. However, what he did not know, but soon discovered, was the appalling fact that the Chinese had already been assured by their intelligence agents that the diplomats in Washington, London and New York were not going to allow MacArthur to retaliate with the U.S. Air Force. MacArthur was going to be restricted to "limited" warfare.
It was in this hour that General MacArthur found that pro-Communist forces in the U.N. and left-wing sympathizers in the State Department were swamping the policies of the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and those who had charge of the Korean War. He found that vast supplies which he badly needed were being diverted to Europe in accordance with point No. 1 of the State Department Conference. He was specifically restricted from following Chinese jets to their bases or bombing the Manchurian Railroad which was dumping mountains of supplies on the north banks of the Yalu River. He was forbidden to bomb the Yalu bridge over which troops and supplies were funneled, and his own supplies and replacements were cut back to the point where a counter-offensive became strategically difficult, if not impossible. The final blow came when the diplomats flatly turned down Chiang Kai-shek's enthusiastic offer to send thousands of trained Nationalist troops from Formosa to fight in Korea.
Over a period of four months General MacArthur watched the slaughter resulting from these stalemate policies. Finally, he could contain himself no longer. He violated a presidential gag order dated December 6, 1950, and answered a written inquiry from Congressman Joseph W. Martin concerning the inexplicable reverses which U.N. forces were suffering in Korea. The General's letter giving recommendations for the winning of the war was read in Congress April 5, 1951, and five days later, President Truman ordered MacArthur summarily withdrawn from all commands.
General MacArthur was relieved by General Matthew B. Ridgeway and he returned to the United States completely perplexed by the sudden termination of his military career. It was not until he landed in San Francisco and met the first wave of shouting, cheering, admiring fellow citizens that he realized that the sickness in the American body politic was not in all its members but only in one corner of its head.
It will be recalled that two more years of military stagnation followed the recall of General MacArthur. Subsequently, hearings before Congressional committees permitted General Mark Clark, General George E. Stratemeyer, General James A. Van Fleet, Admiral Charles Joy and others to explain what happened to their commands in Korea. Each one verified the fact that the military was never permitted to fight a winning war. The diplomats had imposed upon them a theory called "Communist Containment," which in actual operation resulted in the containment of the U.N. fighting forces instead of the Communists. It soon became apparent that the Korean War had been run by the same team and according to the same policies as those which resulted in the fall of China.
It was also to be revealed at a later date that not only had the machinations of confused diplomats contributed to the semi-defeat in Korea but that fulltime under-cover agents of Soviet Russia had often stood at the elbows of officials in London, Washington and at the U.N. in New York to argue the Moscow line. Among the high-level spies for Russia during this critical period were two top British diplomats, Donald MacLean and Guy Burgess. MacLean was head of the American desk in Britain's diplomatic headquarters at London; Burgess was the second secretary of the British Embassy in Washington. Both fled behind the Iron Curtain when they were about to be arrested by British Intelligence.
The Korean Armistice
By the time President Eisenhower took office in January, 1953, there was a general feeling of gloom and despair concerning Korea. The people desperately desired to somehow stop the bloodshed. The hopes for peace were suddenly accelerated by a news flash of March 5 which swept round the world. Joseph Stalin was dead!
The next day a new government took over in Russia and the leader turned out to be Stalin's former secretary and the keeper of the secret Communist files -- Georgi Malenkov. He had seized power by joining forces with Lavrenti P. Beria, head of the secret police who had an army of agents and troops numbering two million. Beria also had charge of the forced labor camps and supervised the atomic energy plants.
However, when Malenkov and Beria took over as heirs of Stalin they immediately found themselves confronted by an explosive economic crisis. Pressure was building up inside Russia (and her satellites) just as it did in 1922 and again in 1932. Malenkov therefore offered respite to his people: "Let us now lay heavy industry aside for awhile. The people cannot eat heavy industry.... We should care for the needs of our people." This was the beginning of a radical new policy for the USSR. At home the slogan was "More Food"; abroad Malenkov's slogan was a campaign for "Peaceful Coexistence" with all the democracies.
It was just twenty-three days after Stalin died that the Communist Chinese acted on their new signals and opened negotiations with the U.N. commanders for an armistice. This finally led to the signing of a truce on July 27, 1953. It became effective twelve days later.
Thus ended the Korean War. It had cost the United States 20 billion dollars and more than 135,000 casualties. It had cost South Korea 1 million dead; another million maimed and wounded 9 million left homeless and saddled South Korea with 4 million refugees from North Korea.
Th
The people of the United States came out of the Korean War sadder and wiser than when they went in. Authorities have stated that two things happened in the Korean War which may yet brand it as the greatest blunder the Communist strategists ever made. First, it awakened the United States to the necessity of vigorously rearming and staying armed so long as the Communist threat exists. Second, it demonstrated to the people of the United States the inherent weaknesses of the United Nations. As Senator Robert A. Taft summed it up: "The United Nations serves a very useful purpose as a town meeting of the world ... but it is an impossible weapon against forcible aggression."
Back in 1950 when the U.N. called upon all its members to furnish the means to resist the Communists, only 16 countries responded with the highly essential ingredient of armed troops. Altogether, these 16 nations furnished an army of 35,000 fighting men. Little South Korea maintained a fighting force of 400,000 men while the United States made up the difference by furnishing a force of 350,000. More than one million American GI's had to be rotated through Korea to maintain the U.S. quota of military strength. In the mind of the average American the U.N. had therefore ceased to represent "collective security."